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PalAss Home > Awards and Grants > Lapworth Medal
Lapworth Medal


The Lapworth Medal is awarded by Council to a palaeontologist who has made a significant contribution to the science by means of a substantial body of research; it is not normally awarded on the basis of a few good papers. Council will look for some breadth as well as depth in the contributions in choosing suitable candidates.

The medal is normally awarded each year. Nominations will normally be invited by 1 March each year; however this year (2009) the deadline will be 1 May. Nominations must be supported by a resume (single sheet of details) of the candidate's career, and further supported by a brief statement from each of two nominees. A list of 10 principal publications should accompany the nomination. The Council will reserve the right to not necessarily make an award in any one year. The Medal is presented at the Annual Meeting.

Nominations should be submitted by email to the secretary ([email protected]). The resume, statements of support and publication lists should be attached in MS Word or PDF format.

The closing date for nominations is 1 May.


Previous recipients of the Lapworth Medal:

    2008 - Prof. Charles Holland
    2007 - Prof. Tony Hallam
    2006 - Prof. Dolf Seilacher
    2005 - Prof. William Gilbert Chaloner FRS
    2004 - Prof. Jim Valentine
    2002 - Sir Alwyn Williams FRS
    2000 - Prof. H. B. Whittington FRS

2008 Lapworth Medal:

    Council awarded Professor Charles Holland the 2008 Lapworth Medal.


2007 Lapworth Medal:

    Council awarded Professor Tony Hallam the 2007 Lapworth Medal in recognition of his achievements in palaeoboiology.


2006 Lapworth Medal:

    Prof. Dolf Seilacher is one of the world’s most renowned invertebrate palaeontologists, widely celebrated for his visionary and inspired interpretations of the fossil record. He has made his most significant contributions to four areas of palaeontology: trace fossils, morphodynamics, the study of exceptionally preserved fossil deposits (Lagerstätten), and Ediacaran assemblages. In the latter he is especially recognised for proposing the innovative (and controversial) hypothesis of the Vendobionta. In each of these fields he has stimulated research with fundamental discoveries and iconoclastic interpretations. In 1992 he was awarded the Crafoord Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which is arguably the closest an earth scientist can get to being a Nobel Laureate. Some of his most cited work has been in the field of morphodynamics, recently acknowledged at his 80th birthday symposium, organised in Yale. Dolf’s major contribution to our understanding of the evolution of morphology was in emphasizing that function is an important but far from complete explanation of organic form. He formalized this realization in 1970 as Konstruktions-Morphologie (constructional morphology), recognizing the influence of phylogeny and architecture in addition to adaptation. This ‘triangular’ approach was very influential at a time when there was little interest in constraints on the evolution of form. In 1990, twenty years on, Dolf expanded the triangle to include an environmental dimension, although this can not be measured directly and is important mainly conceptually. He has applied the methods of constructional morphology to a range of organisms from vendobionts to barnacles, from clams to crinoids. Dolf illuminates his results with the iconography of his line drawings and his unique explanatory terminology. Dolf’s influence on our science is evidenced by the infiltration of his terminology into our everyday working vocabulary – constructional morphology, Lagerstätten and vendobionts. There is no other European palaeontologist more richly deserving of the career recognition that the Lapworth Medal bestows.

2005 Lapworth Medal:

    Council awarded Professor William (Bill) Chaloner FRS the 2005 Lapworth Medal in recognition of his lifetime contributions to palaeobotany over more than 50 years. Bill Chaloner has had an enormous influence on the development of palaeobotany in this country and abroad, always seeing the bigger picture – and always striving to expand the relevance of palaeobotany to questions of broader biological and geological significance. Some of the areas in which he has pioneered new approaches are: integration of the palynological and macropalaeobotanical record by studies of in situ pollen and spores, the early application of scanning electron microscopy to studies of plant fossils, the use of fossil plants in determining ancient climates – including the history of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and the study of plant–animal interactions in the geological record. In addition, he is a world authority on Palaeozoic plants and especially lycopods.




Created by Mark D Sutton on the 2009-03-11. (Version 2.0)